


Home For Christmas

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brother Feels, Christmas fic, Cuddles, Established Relationship, Fluff, Little bit of angst, M/M, Schmoop, Stanford Era, hurt!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 21:54:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2827358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is wounded and alone on Christmas Eve and Sam decides he needs to be with his brother this year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home For Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> This was kind of intended as a Christmas fic, but it sort of gravitated away. It was initially inspired by Elvis' "If I Get Home On Christmas Day". I love that song and it made me think of a Christmas where Dean was by himself and Sam was loitering around Stanford in his usual holiday doldrums for the Christmas break and suddenly decides he needs to be with Dean and steals a car and heads north through the snow.

Sam pulled himself awake at the incessant buzz of his phone on the corner of his desk. He swiped a hand over the drool on his cheek and fumbled for the phone, nearly shoving it into the floor. 

“Shit…” he muttered, flipping it open and putting it to his ear.

“Hey to you, too.”

Sam’s eyes went wide and alert. “Dean?”

“Hey, little brother.”

Sam held the phone pressed hard to his ear, saying nothing, head spinning at the soft sound of his brother’s voice on the line. 

“Sam? Sammy, you there?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I’m here. Sorry.” Sam shoved the thick open volume of law he had been studying before he fell asleep across the desk and closed it, then rearranged his pencil, two pens, and highlighter into parallel lines in front of him. Decided he didn’t like the formation and did it again perpendicular to the original.

Dean’s long, slow breath came over the line. “Look. Sam. I know it’s been—.”

“More than a year.” _One year, four months, seven days, to be exact_.

“Yeah.”

Sam pushed back from the desk, forced himself to lean back in his chair, dropping one arm carelessly over the back, as if Dean could see through the phone and might somehow detect the painful thump-thump behind Sam’s ribs if he didn’t play it off all casual. “So, how’re you doing, Dean?”

There was a long pause. “Actually…”

Sam sat forward, affectations of nonchalance forgotten. It had been a long time since he’d heard his brother’s voice, but not so long that he had lost the ability to detect the bowstring taunt thread of pain in it. “Dean, what happened? Are you all right?”

“Sam. Sammy! It’s okay.” Dean was pushing the pain down, getting a harder grip on it, just like he always did. Sam could tell. “I’m okay. Had a little run in with an ice wraith. Fucking claws…”

“Jesus, Dean…” Sam pushed a trembling hand through his hair. “How bad is it?”

“It’s nothin’, Sammy. Really.” Sam could hear Dean starting to drift back and away from him. He’d called for a reason. Maybe because he needed to hear Sam’s voice. Maybe before he bled out all over some musty motel mattress. 

Sam’s stomach lurched at that thought, and he swallowed against the acid sting at the back of his throat. “Dean…”

“Jesus, Sam. I’m okay. I swear.” Dean’s voice had gone soft, all reassuring like he used to use when Sam woke up scared in the dark just sure that their father was never coming back for them. “I got a couple of good gashes across the chest, and he got a claw in under my ribs, but nothin’ Dad couldn’t stitch back together.”

Sam let out a shaky breath. He still felt like he was going to be sick. “Dean, why did you call?”

Dean was quiet for a minute, and Sam was almost about to retract the words, to tell his brother he didn’t mean it, that it was good to hear from him, when Dean finally spoke.

“You’re right.” Dean paused, and Sam could hear him drawing himself up, shouldering on his heavy armor, cocking his smirky grin across his face. “You’re right, Sam. I didn’t actually figure you’d be around anyway. Shouldn’t you be, I dunno, off skiing or somethin’. Or romancing some chick on a bearskin rug in front of a blazing fire with champagne? Isn’t that what you college boys do?”

“Shut up, Dean.” The retort was quick, easy, practiced over a lifetime. Sam caught himself smiling and knew that Dean would be, too, on the other end of the phone. “But, really…you okay?”

“Yeah. I really am.” There was a rustle of thin motel bedding and a bitten back huff of breath as Dean must have moved himself in or out of bed. “So, what are you still doin’ at school anyway?”

“Who says I’m at school?” Sam cursed the defensiveness in his own voice. 

“Really, Sam?”

“Okay, okay. I’m at school.” Sam picked up the law book from his desk, balanced it in his hand and then tossed it a little disgustedly across to his bed. “I had a few offers from friends, but you know…”

Dean sighed over the line. “You gotta get over that, little brother.”

“Why should I? It’s a stupid holiday.” Sam pushed his hair out of his eyes and blew a breath upward at a few stray strands, brows tugging together. “People just run around getting all cranky about not having enough money, or spending too much, and they go into hock to buy their kids stupid gifts that the stupid kids forget about in less than a week--.”

“Wow! Okay, okay, Mr. Grinch,” Dean laughed.

Sam smiled despite himself. He unfolded himself from his cramped desk chair and sat down on the bed, tipping slowly over backwards and pulling his pillow across his chest. “So, are you and Dad doing anything?”

“Do we ever?” Dean said. “Actually, Dad took off yesterday.”

Sam sat up. “What? He left you? Wounded?”

“Hey, don’t get excited, Sam. I said I was fine. He stitched me up and made sure I wouldn’t bleed out or anything before he left.” It was supposed to be a bit of a joke.

“Dammit, Dean! It’s not funny. What if it got infected? What if—?”

“Sam. I’m a big boy. I’ve got the car. If something happened, I’d be okay.” _I’ve been takin’ care of myself for the last year. Longer. Since you left._ “And I don’t want to fight. I don’t.”

Sam could hear the unspoken words and aching exhaustion in his brother’s voice and it made his chest hurt. He put a hand on his breastbone and pushed. Hard. It didn’t help.

“Sam?”

“Yeah.”

“I just…” Dean’s voice softened to a bare whisper. “Merry Christmas, Sammy.”

Sam choked back a whimper. “Dean, I…”

“Take care, little brother. You hear me?”

“Yeah, Dean, but—.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” Dean cut him off and the line went quiet.

Sam fell back on the bed again, cupping the phone to his chest. He stared at the ceiling for a while, pretending that it was going all watery and out of focus because his eyes were so tired from studying until he finally gave up and rolled over, pressing his face into his pillow. 

 

Dean dropped the phone by his thigh and cringed when he tried to shift up further toward the head of the bed. He hadn’t been lying to Sam when he told the kid he was all right, but he hadn’t been one hundred percent honest either. His chest was okay, the stitches pulled under the bandages when he moved, but the wound in his side under his ribs was more troublesome, and Dean was trying to make the painkillers stretch. It wasn’t like they had refills at the local pharmacy and even though John had said he’d be back in three days tops, Dean’s twenty-two years experience told him to multiply that number by at least three. 

He finally gave up moving and just forced himself to be still on the thin, scratchy motel blanket. There probably wasn’t anything on television to listen to anyway. His fingers brushed across the back of his cellphone again, and he cursed himself a fool for even calling Sam. He wasn’t sure what had possessed him. Maybe it was the quiet getting to him. He’d never been a patient invalid, and the world outside the motel blackout drapes was draped in a blanket of snow, enough that it muffled most of the sounds from the highway and made Dean feel like he’d dropped into some uninhabited Twilight Zone version of the earth. 

Sam had liked the quiet. Some of his favorite places had been churches and libraries, and he loved the long stretches when John had managed to stash them in some backwater rental on the edge of a town or in the country where it was just them and the tall grass and the wind between earth and sky.  That kind of quiet had always made Dean’s skin itch, made him anxious to be out on the road or on the hunt, except for the nights when he and Sam would go find some bit of field somewhere and lay on their backs on a threadbare blanket and stare up at the stars.

Sam would slide up against Dean’s side, slotting in under his shoulder like he had been custom molded for the purpose and as the night wore on he would roll onto his side, slinging an arm over Dean’s chest and tucking one leg down between Dean’s thighs and hooking his foot behind Dean’s calf. Dean’s heart would slow and his skin would go all over warm and for just a little while he’d feel light again, like there was no road to get back to and no monsters in the dark to fight. Sam could do that to him. Only Sam.

So, maybe Dean had called him in hopes to claim some of that calming influence over the distance between them through the phone line. It had been good to hear the kid’s voice, even if he didn’t sound as happy as Dean had forced himself to imagine he would be. It was the only thing that kept him going, thinking of Sam out in the California sun, body tanned golden brown, hair a little bleached out, and his eyes bright and unshadowed by his past. That vision alone was the only thing that had stopped Dean from turning the Impala straight toward Stanford on lots of dark nights when the quiet and aloneness were becoming more than he could stand. 

Even though it had been months before his little brother ever left Stanford since he and Sam had enjoyed one of those quiet nights.

The couple of years before Sam finally left, had been filled with a lot of fighting, mostly between Sam and John, but Dean had been on the sharp end of Sam’s anger often enough as well. He’d argued so much and so often about missing school and his activities because of the job they did that John had started just leaving him behind most of the time and taking Dean out on the hunts with him. Somehow, though, this created an even deeper rift that Dean got caught in the gravitational pull of even though it was John trying to do right by Sam and give him what he wanted.

Moody teenagers, Dean thought. He pushed the phone away and tried to roll over and ease the pressure on his back and the wound in his side. He reached for the half bottle of Jack still sitting on the night table. Another couple of hours and he could take a painkiller. Then maybe he’d be able to sleep for most of the night. That would cure his ills. If he wasn’t conscious, he couldn’t mind the quiet, and he couldn’t miss what wasn’t there anymore.

 

Sam had made it to the Idaho border before the snow hit, and he was glad the pick-up truck he’d ‘borrowed’ had four wheel drive. He’d thought of calling Dean back after he’d made his decision but then thought better of it, knowing that Dean would try and talk him out of it, might even succeed, and worse…might disappear before Sam could get to him. So, he’d called Bobby instead, knowing that John checked in often enough that he ought to have some idea where Dean was. Luck would have it Dean had actually called and talked to Bobby earlier that day and told him where he was. North Idaho, some no name town at the foot of the Rockies. 

Sam had checked the weather, seen the snow moving over the area, and decided if he left right now, he could maybe make it by midnight. He’d packed a duffle, grabbed some supplies at the student center, stopped off in the visitor lot to pick up a likely looking candidate for the drive and then made one last stop at a liquor store on the way out of town. 

He was about twenty minutes away from the motel according to the clerk at the last gas station, and his stomach was starting to remind him that a) he hadn’t eaten in nearly eighteen hours, and b) he hadn’t seen Dean face to face in a lot more than that.

What if Dean didn’t even want to see him? What if Dean had just called him in a delirium from blood loss or fever and by the time Sam got there he would be fine again and angry to see his younger brother who had all but deserted him.

Sam shook the thought from his mind.

Dean knew Sam hadn’t deserted him…didn’t he? Sure, they really hadn’t had a proper good-by, and it was pretty low of Sam to have sprung his leaving on Dean on such short notice, but he’d been so afraid, living with a heavy leaden pit of fear in his gut for weeks, that Dean would be furious with him, get in the car and drive off and just not come back, and Sam would lose him that much sooner. Dean had done just the opposite. He’d quietly told Sam good luck, wished him the best, helped him pack up his stuff and then disappeared into the night when John had come home to Sam’s bags at the door and the yelling had started.

Sam had looked for Dean outside, had wanted desperately that one last touch, one last hug, but Dean was gone, and Sam had driven off, watery vision not clearing up for at least a hundred miles down the highway.

The hotel sign came into view a few more miles down the road through the thickening curtain of white that had started coming down about forty minutes ago in earnest. It was only half lit and did little to shed any real illumination on the lot below or the half dozen white covered humps of cars scattered across the lot; but Sam didn’t need light or good weather to recognize the sleek line of the Impala’s body even under the blanket of white. He pulled up beside her, the snow dampening the crunch and roll of his tires and the sound of the engine. 

Of the few rooms on this side of the motel where the Impala was parked it didn’t take any kind of strength in deduction to know that Dean would have chosen the corner room. He always did. The predictability of his brother and the fact that something so simple hadn’t changed and Sam hadn’t forgotten how to read it made a spark of hope lick low in his belly. 

There were no footprints on the walkway and the car had at least a day’s worth of snow on top of it, so Dean hadn’t been out of the room since Sam had talked to him last. Fear clenched in his gut that maybe Dean had lied to him and the wound had been more serious than Dean had let on. There was no light on inside, and Sam’s fingers fumbled his lock picks with more than just cold as he squatted, flashlight held between his teeth, and worked the lock. He heard the soft telltale click and carefully turned the knob, letting the door swing open into the dark while he kept his side turned and his back against the frame. Old habits died hard.

He cautiously stepped forward.

“Hold it. Right there.”

Sam froze instinctively, but it took nothing to process his brother’s voice, and his muscles stood down from the defensive even before they could bunch up in response to the graveled whisper of warning.

“Dean?”

Pause. Indrawn breath. “Sam?”

“Yeah. Dean, it’s me.” Sam’s eyes adjusted to the dark of the room and he could just make Dean out, propped against the room partition, gun aimed in Sam’s general direction which set off all kinds of alarm bells. Dean was a crack shot, even on moving targets when he was moving right along with them, so his aim shouldn’t be in the general direction of anything. It should be dead on. 

Sam reached for the lamp on the table in front of the window and flipped the switch, kicking the door to behind him. Dean let out a sharp hiss and held up his hand in front of his eyes to shield them from the light. Sam immediately stripped out of his snowy jacket and tossed it over the shade, cutting down on the light by at least half. He dropped his duffle and tossed his picks on the table. 

“Dean? You all right?”

Dean dropped his gun hand and cautiously lowered his other hand, squinting across the room in the direction of Sam’s voice. 

“Dean, what the hell happened to you!” Sam was on him in an instant. Hands all over his face and chest and side, long, graceful fingers traveling well known paths over bare skin and bringing so many memories singing to the surface that Dean had to bite the inside of his lip to keep from moaning with pleasure. When Sam had assessed the damage to his satisfaction and determined he wasn’t going to hurt his brother by hugging him, he folded Dean up tight in an embrace that nearly wrung tears from him just by virtue that it had been so long, and he was—if he was brutally honest with himself—so damn hungry for this. 

“Sammy.” It came out a lot softer and more needy than he intended. He set his lips on Sam’s collarbone—and damn if the kid hadn’t gained at least another inch—and tried to resist turning into the hollow of Sam’s warm throat, but it was a fight he was doomed to lose from the second he’d picked up the phone last night. “Sammy.”

“Jesus, Dean, what happened?” Sam was pulling him away, running his thumbs over Dean’s cheekbones, avoiding the tender, angry red burns around his eyes. The damage he had neglected to mention that would have sent Sam over the edge into doing…exactly what he had done. Sam was here. And Dean hadn’t even had to ask.

“Flare. Ice wraith had me and dad had to set the flare off too close.” Sam cursed viciously under his breath, his fingers momentarily tightening at the sides of Dean’s head. “It’s okay, Sam. It was him or me. Dad didn’t have a choice.”

Sam was shaking his head, and Dean didn’t need to be able to see clearly to know the expression on his face was written in sympathetic pain and low simmering anger. “Did he at least get you checked out?”

Dean gave a quick shake of his head. “I’ll be fine. It’s just a little flash burn. A couple of days and I’ll be back at it. No sweat.”

Sam wasn’t a fool. He hadn’t lived in his brother’s pocket, in the shade of his love and protection for nineteen years, and not become an expert at reading a line of bravado bullshit like that. “Dean, depending on the damage, it could be permanent…I can’t believe Dad just left you like this! Shit. You can’t even fire a gun!”

Dean tensed in defense. “I damn well can fire a gun—.”

“But you probably couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn!” Sam threw his hands up, spun away, jabbing angry fingers through his already mussed hair. “What the _hell_ was he thinking? Isn’t it enough that he risks his own damn life everyday on stupid whims? Does he have to do it with you, too?”

“Sam…”

“No! No, Dean. I am not gonna let him off the hook this time. He was always playing with your life! Always risking you right along with himself in the name of his damn crusade…and I hated it!” 

Sam paced across the floor, hands working into fists over and over again, shoulders tensed and waiting for the fight he knew was coming. Dean wouldn’t stand for Sam coming down on Dad. He never had. It had always been the one place they couldn’t see eye to eye. But this time? This time John had gone too damn far. How could he leave his eldest son, the son who followed him with such blind devotion and love, alone and injured and practically defenseless? Even if he couldn’t dredge up any paternal affection to tell him how fucking skewed his morals were, surely he could see the tactical loss if something happened to Dean when he was in this state. Dean was like a sleek, finely tuned weapon of mass destruction to John, if nothing else. Losing that kind of an asset would hurt.

“Sammy…”

“Dean, I—.” Sam froze in his circuit of the matted, worn carpet between the bed and door. His hands went slack, shoulders sagged, and he looked—really looked—at his brother.

The fight wasn’t there. Whether it was because Dean actually believed that John was wrong, or just because he was too tired and in too much pain to battle his baby brother on it, Sam wasn’t sure. He was slouched against the partition wall, gun hanging from limp fingers, face ravaged, eyes bleary and tired and yearning; and Sam went to him, wrapped him up again and buried his nose and mouth in the short hair above Dean’s ear.

“Sammy…” It was a sigh this time, full of relief. 

“I’m sorry, Dean. I’m sorry. I won’t—just forget I said anything. It doesn’t matter. Not now. You’re okay, and I’m here.”

“Yeah.” 

Dean let Sam tuck his head down further into the curve of his neck, snug him closer around his shoulders, and they just stood there like that for a long time. Dean had tried hard to keep hold of the memory of being tucked against Sam, in the night when they slept, in the back of the car when they were younger and Sam was still small and wiry, in the moments after a hunt when things went all sideways and one or both of them ended up bleeding. The memory was good and it kept him going, held him together when he felt his seams getting thin and strained and starting to unravel; but it didn’t compare to the reality.

Sam had gotten big, and strong, and grown up in so many ways in the last year and a half, ways that Dean didn’t know the specifics of but could feel in ever line and curve of his body and ripple of muscle. This wasn’t how they usually played it. Sam was the one who needed the comforting, the nurturing, and Dean had always given it to him, even when he felt empty and drained and dry of every emotion he’d ever owned, he’d still been able to find enough to give Sammy, to wrap him up good and warm and be sure that he knew he was loved.

Now it was Sam doing the comforting. How the tables had turned.

Dean nestled closer to Sam, lifted his arms and twined them around Sam’s ribs, squeezing tight and then tighter. Sam’s breath hitched and caught, and Dean felt the ghost of a kiss at his temple.

“Lay down with me?” Sam whispered.

Dean nodded and let Sam lead him back to the bed, heard the covers being pulled back, Sam toeing off his shoes, the soft whisper of fabric as he pulled off his t-shirts. Then Sam was pressed against him, skin to skin, pulling him down onto the bed, careful of his wounds, shifting and wrapping his long body all around Dean and cradling him in his arms and the tilt of his hips. 

Dean sighed, long and low, as Sam pulled up the blanket and tucked it around them against the dark and cold. He let his muscles unravel for the first time in months, hell, probably a year, and sank into the safety and warmth of Sam’s arms and let his baby brother work his magic on the itch under his skin and the never ending drumbeat in his chest that was always moving him forward, letting Sam let him stop…and breathe.

“Why did you come, Sammy?” The question was small and mumbled, and Dean was only half certain he wanted an answer.

Sam’s arms shifted and tightened. He pressed a kiss to Dean’s brow, smoothing out the last ridges of tension. “I guess I wanted to be home for Christmas.”

Dean turned his face further into Sam’s chest, and if Sam felt his brother’s cheeks get hot against his skin, or felt the fine tremor in his shoulders that eventually took over his whole body, then he gave no indication of response except to scratch his fingers lightly and steadily through Dean’s hair and whisper kisses along his brow and temples and the line of his eyebrows and bridge of his nose, murmuring all the while all the sweet nonsense that Dean had taught him in the dark after Sam woke up from nightmares full of blood and fire.

It was a long time before Dean could do more than focus on his breathing and cling to his brother like this was their last night on earth. It was an old and tired line that Dean had used again and again, but it had never really rung true for him, not like it did tonight with the blanket of snow guarding them against the outside world and Sam here in his bed, and the reality that morning would probably bring another parting, another good-by, one that ran the risk of being permanent this time. But those were things he didn’t want to think about. Not tonight. Tonight he was holding still, tethered to Sam, letting the world turn without him for a precious few hours.

He brushed a kiss across Sam’s warm skin, felt the muscles ripple in anticipation, heard his heart skip a beat inside his chest. He nuzzled closer, brushing more kisses full of promise against Sam’s shoulder.

“Best Christmas present ever, Sammy…best ever.”


End file.
